Those women who'd "used a sex toy in the last year" and "had sex more than twice a week in the four weeks before being interviewed" were similarly "significantly more likely" to have felt the earth move.

The likelihood of female orgasm was not, however, affected by "whether [women] had become sexually active before age 16, the length of time they had been sexually active, the number of sexual partners over the lifetime, whether they had masturbated in the last month, had deliberately visited an internet sex site in the last year, had watched an X-rated video or film in the last year, or their attitudes toward sex".

As for the blokes, well, the researchers found there "was no significant association between whether men reached orgasm during their most recent sexual encounters and language spoken at home, education, household income, occupational classification, or religious belief".

Clearly demonstrating their ability to shoot their loads without regard for their mother tongue or how fat their paypacket is, 94.8 per cent of men had an orgasm during their last sexual encounter, compared to just 68.9 per cent of the opposite sex who finished the session totally satisifed as women.

The principal reason for female frustration is, however, not due to socio-economic factors. Yup, you guessed it: lack of proper attention considerably reduced a woman's likelihood to orgasm. Specifically, "orgasm was least likely (50 per cent) among the group whose only reported practice was vaginal intercourse. Rates were higher (around 70 per cent) among those who had intercourse plus manual stimulation, or intercourse plus cunnilingus".

And, finally, the survey unsurprisingly found that "women having sex with women were more likely to reach orgasm at their last encounter (76 per cent)" - a fact which provoked UK tabloid The Sun to condense the entire report down to the delicious headline "Lesbians have more orgasms". ®